I will not go there if I can help it. I have not the least confidence in
the value of your introduction to the Devil. I can't help thinking that
it would be of better use "the other way, the other way," but I won't
try it there, either, at present, if I can help it. Your godson says is
that your duty? and he begs me to enclose a blush newly blushed for you.
As to writing, I have written to you twenty times and twenty more to that,
if you only knew it. I have been writing a little Christmas book, besides,
expressly for you. And if you don't like it, I shall go to the font of
Marylebone Church as soon as I conveniently can and renounce you: I am not
to be trifled with. I write from Paris. I am getting up some French steam.
I intend to proceed upon the longing-for-a-lap-of-blood-at-last principle,
and if you _do_ offend me, look to it.
We are all well and happy, and they send loves to you by the bushel. We
are in the agonies of house-hunting. The people are frightfully civil,
and grotesquely extortionate. One man (with a house to let) told me
yesterday that he loved the Duke of Wellington like a brother. The same
gentleman wanted to hug me round the neck with one hand, and pick my
pocket with the other.
Don't be hard upon the Swiss. They are a thorn in the sides of European
despots, and a good wholesome people to live near Jesuit-ridden kings on
the brighter side of the mountains. My hat shall ever be ready to be
thrown up, and my glove ever ready to be thrown down for Switzerland. If
you were the man I took you for, when I took you (as a godfather) for
better and for worse, you would come to Paris and amaze the weak walls
of the house I haven't found yet with that steady snore of yours, which
I once heard piercing the door of your bedroom in Devonshire Terrace,
reverberating along the bell-wire in the hall, so getting outside into
the street, playing Eolian harps among the area railings, and going down
the New Road like the blast of a trumpet.
I forgive you your reviling of me: there's a shovelful of live coals for
your head--does it burn? And am, with true affection--does it burn
now?--
Ever yours.
[Sidenote: The Hon. Richard Watson.]
PARIS, 48, RUE DE COURCELLES, ST. HONORE,
_Friday, Nov. 27th, 1846._